Nike Billionaire to Break Ground on New Animation Studio

Shoe mogul Phil Knight hopes to give Pixar and DreamWorks a run for their money. The Nike co-founder is moving forward with Laika, the animation studio he acquired six years ago.

Knight, who’s worth about $8 billion, starts building a 30-acre studio campus in Tualitin, Oregon, later this year, around the same time he releases Laika’s first feature, Coraline (clip embedded).

As sneak peeked earlier, the stop-motion movie based on the book by Neil Gaiman follows a girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who freaks out when she stumbles into a darkly fantastical universe.

Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) directs, with Knight’s son Travis serving as lead animator. (Travis Knight already worked as an animator when his father purchased Will Vinton Studios of "California Raisins" fame.

Besides Coraline, Laika has six projects in development. They include Here Be Monsters!, a 19th-century steampunk thriller set in London, and The Wall and the Wing, adapted by Lost co-creator Jeffrey Lieber from the Laura Ruby novel about a Manhattan girl who can make herself invisible.